Keep HDMI Powered off on Raspberry Pi

On the debian based OS’s (Raspbmc / Raspbian), if you run the device headless most of the time you can ensure the HDMI port is powered off by editingĀ /etc/rc.local and adding the below line aboveĀ exit 0:

/opt/vc/bin/tvservice -o

(notice its the same line that I posted in the script to turn XBMC off and on in Raspbmc).

Reboot and done. Not sure how much you gain from this but its a nice little trick.

Raspbmc: Turn XBMC On or Off (inc. HDMI Out) from SSH

Why would you want to do this?

I use my RPi for XBMC and as a web server (yet to reinstall after switching to Raspbmc). I do not always want XBMC running, as I am not always home and also not always watching films! So in the interests of saving system resources I wanted to stop XBMC and shut off the HDMI to stop any TV interference. There are two commands to do this, but they are quite long and not easy to remember! I needed something to shorten this process. Preferably xbmc start/stop.

This is how I implemented it.

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